The silent stones of Srirangapatna

Tombs at the Garrison cemetery. Photos by Suryakumari Dennison 

The Garrison Cemetery. Photos by Suryakumari Dennison 

St Bartholomew’s Church. Photos by Suryakumari Dennison

The Garrison Cemetery at Srirangapatna, with River Cauvery flowing nearby, is serene and secluded but the final moments of many interred there were turbulent.

As military men, civilians and their families passed on, they were borne to the Garrison Cemetery (Mysuru was then a garrison town), which was used between 1800 and 1860.

Some tombs at the cemetery resemble white towers, while others are simpler structures. The inscriptions on the headstones have faded with age, but dates that can be deciphered reveal that several of those in the cemetery died in their 20s and 30s.

Women often did not survive childbirth, while diseases like typhoid and the plague carried off adults and youngsters.

The silent tombs here carry stories of minor intrigues.

Wandering around the cemetery, I looked for the grave of the wife of Colonel Scott. One April day, in 1817, Scott (who had taken part in the encounter against Tipu Sultan) returned to his bungalow, not far from the Garrison Cemetery and found his spouse and daughters dead, possibly of cholera. The distraught man was never seen again. Legend has it that he plunged into the Cauvery on horseback.

Other accounts

According to other accounts, his wife is said to have died during childbirth on April 19, 1817 and his two daughters due to cholera. Also, a few others point out that the Cauvery in April is never in a torrential flow, and therefore, Scott never really vanished as the legend says. Rather, he left to Madras without informing any locals or the Mysore Government, and there he was able to get medical leave and proceed to Britain.

Certainly, Scott is not at the Garrison Cemetery and, although I had heard that the graves of Caroline Isabella Scott and her children were there, I could not find them.

Swiss soldiers

However, a name hard to miss here is Meuron.

Several officers of the Swiss Regiment de Meuron — named after its commander Colonel Charles Daniel de Meuron — who perished fighting Tipu Sultan, were buried at the Garrison Cemetery after the 4th Anglo-Mysore War.

The Swiss were mercenaries, who transferred their allegiance from the Dutch East India Company to the British because they were dissatisfied with their salaries.

Meuron’s descendant Louis Dominique de Meuron and his wife, assisted by the archaeological department, commissioned a local architect to supervise the restoration of the cemetery.

The Garrison Cemetery is currently under the auspices of St Bartholomew’s Church, which itself is nearly two centuries years old. Arthur Henry Cole (1780—1844), the British Resident of Mysore, had requested the aid of Krishnaraja III, who gifted land for the construction of the building.

The Wadiyars also contributed towards the embellishment of the interior, notably the stained-glass image of the saint after whom the church is named.

Three hundred metres off the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway, the Garrison Cemetery is off the beaten track and difficult to locate. It is worthwhile, however, to spend an hour there, absorbing its ambience of timeless tranquillity.